PSP Roundup

Smash Court Tennis 3

Publisher: Sony

Developer: Namco

Just like all the other tennis games on the market, Smash Court Tennis 3 features the likenesses of various real-life tennis players such as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, or Maria Sharapova and Martina Hingis. Just like all the other tennis games, Smash Court Tennis 3 has got all the modes: arcade, pro tour, exhibition, challenge, and ad hoc multiplayer. And just like all the other tennis games, it's pretty decent. The characters are all pretty convincing. The game's technical presentation is first rate throughout, with various tennis courts, from skyscraper rooftops to palm beaches and English castles, all beautifully realised. There are some quirky mini-games, based on Pac-Man and Galaxians. And there's a pretty cool character creation and career mode.

So when it comes to distinguishing the game from all the other tennis games out there, it boils down, as you might expect, to the tennis, and that's where it comes off second best. Which is weird, because on first reflection, you might think that adding in a greater range of shots would be a good thing. It's just that next to the virtuosity of Virtua Tennis it all feels a bit over-complicated carrying them out. Instead of determining your shot by an open-ended system of position and timing, Smash Court Tennis adds a layer of predefined shots on top of that. While that increases the realism and tactical range in some respects, in other respects it makes the game feel much more stilted and, ultimately, less convincing than Sega's masterpiece. It also requires an insanely long series of tutorial lessons, some of which are surprisingly tough.

In the end, it's certainly decent enough, but it's not good enough to unseat Virtua Tennis from its position as the best game of tennis on the PSP.

7/10

The History Channel: Great Battles of Rome

Publisher: Black Bean Games/The History Channel

Developer: Slitherine Software/Atomic Planet

As you might surmise from the title, The History Channel: Great Battles of Rome is an attempt to straddle education and entertainment. It's a pretty straightforward realtime strategy game, punctuated, every so often, by semi-informative cut-scenes that are full of moody voiceovers, lots of close-ups of maps, dramatic angled footage of ancient architecture, and melodramatic re-enacments (or 'historical footage' as the press release would have it). None of them ever really tell you anything you didn't know, unless you didn't know anything about Roman history, but they're entertaining enough.

As for the actual entertainment part of the equation, that sees you start out by enforcing Rome's enlightened approach to government on some unruly farmers, before going on, if you've got the patience, to fight over 100 battles across three campaigns. Between battles you recruit, upgrade, and equip your troops. Before battles you position your troops on the battlefield and use a pretty clumsy menu to issue them with orders (like, Outflank, Envelop, Advance and Charge and so on). Then, during battles, you sit and watch. Specifically you watch your units quite happily sit and do nothing, even if their allies are being attacked. You can take direct control of your units, but only one at a time, and doing so switches off their AI so you'll need to keep controlling them, one at a time. And they're difficult to control, too. It's pretty laborious, and it would make the game more difficult if it weren't for the fact that the game is so easy.

Whatever orders you give your men, whatever terrain you deploy them across, none of it seems to matter. So the game ends up falling somewhere in the middle: it's not quite educational enough, nor entertaining enough. You'd be better off with a good history book, and a better strategy game.